There Is Now One Less Breuckelen in Brooklyn

April 14, 2011

This year, things named Breuckelen reached an all-time high, thanks to the Breuckelen Distilling Company, Breuckelen the restaurant, and Breuckelen the recently opened wine store we saw while driving through Crown Heights not long ago. But now, that number has shrunk by one, as Breuckelen the restaurant has apparently closed.

Per Cobble Hill Blog, the place served its last meal earlier this week, after only seven months in business.

In reviewing the restaurant, Lauren Shockey wrote that it “embrace[d] what has become known as Kings County cuisine: local, seasonal, new American fare that champions the ideals of farm living within a decidedly urban environment.” But while it was a “decent local spot,” it fell “short of being a destination,” especially given that its entrées came “tagged with Manhattan prices.”

It also didn’t help that the restaurant had plenty of competition from the many other new-wave neighborhood joints dotting Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens — Strong Place, Buttermilk Channel, Watty & Meg, Frankies 457, Seersucker, and Henry Public all offer similarly cozy/vaguely hip ambience and menus heavy with refined comfort food. So perhaps there’s a limit to how many Brooklyn-style restaurants Brooklyn can support — or at least the parts of Brooklyn where people seem to want the kind of restaurants that recall an earlier time when Brooklyn was Breuckelen.

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